1. Technical Field
The present inventions relate to tents, shelters and other outdoor devices, and, more particularly, relate to an outdoor system having the typical tent elements, however treating them as individual, but compatible units, capable of creating, individually or in combinations, multiple shelters and other useful applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Tents and other temporary shelters are used since prehistoric times in a number of outdoor activities.
Generally, for protection from the elements, a tent could be used in only one way—by setting up the one shelter it is designed for. This is the reason the tent is not an item of the everyday life. On average, it is used few days per year, and sometimes, not every year.
Sometimes on a solo backpacking expedition, where the gear weight is a critical feature, it happens so that a person has to take with him, or her, the three person family tent, which he or she already owns. One way to avoid carrying extra weight would be the buying of yet another non-basic, single function product—the lighter single person tent.
On the other hand, people use other, somehow related, products such as jackets, umbrellas, bicycle/moped covers, which serve functions related to the tent's function—protection from the elements. All these, including the tents themselves, are examples of non-basic, specialized, one-function products.
Many inventions attempt to close this gap of ineffectiveness by a second approach—the combination of two functions into a single, but more complex product.
Fisher in U.S. Pat. No. 646,421, Mason in U.S. Pat. No. 766,719, and Gotsche in U.S. Pat. No. 901,802 combine a cape with a tent. It is easy to pitch but it has no floor and the construction is limited to only these two uses.
Bryan in U.S. Pat. No. 1,078,992 and Bosson in U.S. Pat. No. 1,895,911 show a poncho like garment to be used instead of a cape. This improves comfort while decreasing the surface of the needed cover, but there is still no floor and the functionality is limited.
Till in U.S. Pat. No. 2,268,317 and Laseman in U.S. Pat. No. 3,837,006 propose garment and tent constructions with limited functionality.
Wallin in U.S. Pat. No. 2,344,379 use two raincoats in combination to pitch a tent. That decreases further the size of the material needed for the construction, but there is still no floor and the invention is limited to these two uses only.
Weston in US 2011/0179548 attempts to construct raincoat from a poncho. This is a good feature in windy conditions, but A-type shelter still has no floor and the usability is limited to these two uses only.
Gutshe in U.S. Pat. No. 7,908,676 uses staffed with fabric jacket which is able to expand into tent. Although the floor ability to stop the water from going inside on the floor is probably doubtful, this jacket type construction keeps everything tight which is good in windy weather. Overall, the construction is limited to these two uses only.
All these are examples of proposals for products with one or few functions, but which still fail to address a vast majority of outdoor needs. Of course, there are always tradeoffs and probably there will never be discovered a device which could solve all outdoor issues.
However, there is a third approach—generic outdoor products combined by compatibility and functionality in a system which would be able to address a greater scope of outdoor needs. The end user of such system would have a greater number of choices under different circumstances and would not have to carry along all components, but rather tailor a combination of them according to his/her current needs. Both Horn in U.S. Pat. No. 2,093,889 and Todorov in a Bulgarian patent application filed on Apr. 10, 1998 and published in the Official Gazette of the Patent Office of the Republic of Bulgaria as BG 102381 A on Nov. 30, 1999 showed a simple design that works as a rain poncho that offers the ability to construct different tent constructions using one generic item. These constructions, however, are difficult to variably construct and have large areas without adequate frame support which might make them unstable in windy weather. All tent constructions seem to make the user accommodate to the abilities and the limitations of the single generic item instead the other way around.
A modular, truly versatile shelter system, which has more than one generic item, would better adjust to the user's needs.